Our Blog Today

Our Latest Posts

The whole idea of “cool” in the United States has a very curious history. It really does. In fact, even the word “cool” has a very interesting back story. You have to understand that as recently as the 1950s, the American cultural ethos has turned around conformity. In the American imagination, the more alike you are to everybody else, the more acceptable and praiseworthy you are.

It seems like the more generic people seem, the more social influence they have. The whole emphasis is on being like everybody else and this is encapsulated in the American preference in the 1950s for housing that looks like it came from some sort of cookie cutter. If you were to view movie clips from the 1950s, you’d see that these template-driven housing tracts seem to have popped up all over the United States like mushrooms after a hard midsummer swing.

It really is quite crazy because even to this very day in certain parts of San Francisco, there are houses that look just like each other. Now, in this day, Americans point to such mentality with ridicule. They say, “How can people live like that?” Well, it really all boils down to the cultural mindset. Back in those days, you want to be just like everybody else. That’s why the whole concept of “cool” back then was rather strange and unusual.

Jazz musicians and members of minority groups were the only ones who had “cool” as some sort of cultural value. Everybody else and I’m talking about the majority of the population of the United States was too busy trying to be like everybody else. They really took the old idea of going along just to get along to a whole other level.

Conformity was the name of the game. Words like “abnormal” were used all the time because you don’t want to be abnormal. You don’t want to be that person who is different from the norm. You don’t want to stick out. You want to be just like everybody else. Come the 1960s and people are starting to become more real and more connected with inner realities.

This façade of conformity started to give way. Cracks started to appear. People started to question the long running and long held beliefs that held America together. The 1960s, of course, witnessed the rise of the Civil Rights movement, all sorts of riots and, of course, the protest movement against the Vietnam War.

Put all these cultural trigger points together and you can see why the greater American cultural emphasis and value systems started to turn in a very dramatic way against conformity. Now it’s all about marching to the beat of your very special individual drummer. In fact, in certain parts of the country like San Francisco, the weirder you are, the more people would want to be your friend. Funny how things have changed.

It is precisely in this cultural environment that the idea of cool became so seductive and appealing. Now, everybody wants to be cool. What’s so awesome about cool is that you can be just like everybody else in the sense that you’re conforming to the same societal values but you don’t have to be obvious about it. Do you see the paradox here? Do you see the irony? Do you see, let’s face it, the hypocrisy?

In other words, deep down inside, Americans still want to be conformist but they’re doing it by being nonconformist. Pretty funny, right? Well, that’s precisely the cultural milieu we’re in. It really is some sort of cultural doublespeak but that’s the name of the game and that’s why if you are looking to buy vape juice online, you always will have to run into the cool factor. You may not want to. Maybe you’d rather not but that’s the reality of the situation. There still has to be some sort of cool factor there. That’s why some vapers love to wear vape juice brand t-shirts and swag.

What makes this a little bit tricky is that the vaping lifestyle continues to evolve as we speak. As more and more people adopt vaping and drop old-school cigarettes, there are all sorts of cultural contributions and inner subcultural currents and turbulence at play. You really can’t quite put your finger on it and say that something is definitely cool and something is definitely out. You really have to play it by ear.

So, do yourself a big favor and make sure that you focus on your attitude. As long as you’re being yourself, it really wouldn’t matter whether you’re cool or not. People who like you will continue to like you. People who are normally drawn to your personality type will continue to be drawn to you. Everybody else can go take a hike. It doesn’t really matter whether they like you or not. It doesn’t really matter whether they accept you or not. You are your own person.

You should start thinking this way because it would make life so much easier and it would simplify a lot of things going on in your life. Otherwise, if you try to be what other people expect you to be and if you try to live out their reality with your life, you’ll always end up with the short end of the stick. This is a basic life lesson a lot of junior high schoolers find out. You learn this type of lesson in middle school but just in case you missed out on the memo, there you have it. I’ve spelled it out in black and white so you don’t have to go through the unnecessary trauma of finding this all out for yourself.

You have to be your own person and if a lot people think you’re weird, then so be it. It’s better to be happy doing your own thing, attracting the people you’re currently attracting and going on your merry way. You don’t need to be somebody you’re not just to attract friends or to attain some sort of cool status. This is the ultimate definition of personal cool.

Search

Recent Posts

Social

About Us

This website was actually a side project for several years. The person who founded this website was a media practitioner who worked for several large PR and advertising firms in the Bay Area as well as in London, England.